Fred wrote:Detroit is NOT overloaded with prospects it's a fantasy repeated over and over by media & fans....like sheep. They had a couple of lucky picks years ago but since then have wasted a lot of picks. Most of it was covered up pre Cap days by buying players...no more. I'm going to be interested to see how they do without Lidstrom playing 25 minutes a game.

Detroit was the BEST drafting team from about 89 - 2006 bar none and it isn't even close. Since then, sure they don't have a ton in their pipeline but they aren't exactly devoid of talent either. A couple of lucky picks years ago ? Wake up man . They built their nucleus with superb drafting and supplemented their team with a few high priced UFA.

Blob I don't believe that. If you study there picks you'll see for every lucky late pick there was 5 terrible picks made ahead of the lucky ones. No one wastes picks like Detroit did. If the lucky picks were so sure fire star players they don't leave them and allow every other team take a swing at them. Look at their draft in 1994 they took Tomes Holstrum in the 10th round the 9 picks before him I don't believe one played in the NHL. In 1989 they took Lidstrom in the third round but took Sillinger and Boughner in rounds 1 & 2 both destined for the HHOF. Look at the names of the no name players Detroit has drafted. Plus if they were so good how come with the same scouts they're now drawing a blanks. We'll have to disagree on this. Read the names of the picks it's like a who's who of poor drafting

I don't understand how a team can get raked over the coals for getting a good-to-great player in the late rounds just because they did not pick them earlier?

Draft picks should be used to take the best players yes, but the marketplace should also be taken into account. You want to pick players as late as they can without losing them to another team; that way you can use your earlier picks on other players who are better known and could also pan out to be NHL players.

You don't identify the best player and go wayyyy off the board to take them with your earliest pick, that deprives you of a shot at other better known prospects (who perhaps even have a better shot at panning out as NHLers.. even if they don't have high ceilings).. if you want the highest quality draft class you take players just ahead of where you figure they're going to go, and you make the best use of the picks that frees up.

Sure the Wings didn't pick many NHLers with the picks they used before selecting Franzen, Zetterberg and Datsyuk but that was hardly a foregone conclusion when those other players were selected; just because they did not happen to does not mean that the picks they used to select three elite players are any less worth of praise.

(Also, keep in mind they had just one first rounder, two seconds and two thirds - one of which was used to select Franzen - in those drafts so it's not like they whiffed on any easy picks.)

I think you also take late round picks (5+) on players who may not come over or could be late bloomers. I think a lot of Russian players are chosen in the later rounds because the chance of them coming over to play 3rd or 4th line is low but there still is a chance. Also other minor leagues may not be the same as CHL so how well will a player from Russia/Sweden/Cz league be in the NHL if they don't spend time in the CHL first.

Not saying they won't make it in the NHL but your later round draft picks are for the "what if" players. And for every great player chosen late round there are thousand who don't even make it to training camp.

dbr wrote:I don't understand how a team can get raked over the coals for getting a good-to-great player in the late rounds just because they did not pick them earlier?

Draft picks should be used to take the best players yes, but the marketplace should also be taken into account. You want to pick players as late as they can without losing them to another team; that way you can use your earlier picks on other players who are better known and could also pan out to be NHL players.

You don't identify the best player and go wayyyy off the board to take them with your earliest pick, that deprives you of a shot at other better known prospects (who perhaps even have a better shot at panning out as NHLers.. even if they don't have high ceilings).. if you want the highest quality draft class you take players just ahead of where you figure they're going to go, and you make the best use of the picks that frees up.

Sure the Wings didn't pick many NHLers with the picks they used before selecting Franzen, Zetterberg and Datsyuk but that was hardly a foregone conclusion when those other players were selected; just because they did not happen to does not mean that the picks they used to select three elite players are any less worth of praise.

(Also, keep in mind they had just one first rounder, two seconds and two thirds - one of which was used to select Franzen - in those drafts so it's not like they whiffed on any easy picks.)

I'm not trying to make light of the players that Detroit picked up. Clearly great players. But the scouting has praise heaped upon it when IMO it shouldn't. Their selection of players chosen with high picks clearly shows their inability to make good choices. The players they picked up at the end of the draft worked out very well, a large percentage of the early picks were wasted of picks. No one tries to screw up first round selection be they Detroit or Dallas.

The suggestion has been that Vcr is lousy and Detroit can walk on water and that just is not so. In recent years the Detroit brains trust has not fared well and to my knowledge it's the same brains trust as they had years ago. Kindle a first round pick, "developed through their system" spends too many nights in the press box. Smith drafted 5 years ago is another D that has as yet failed to crack the line up consistently. He's 23, Kindle is 25. Now they're signing FA to compensate such as Ian White. You wanna heap praise on their scouts go ahead, IMO they're average

Fred I would bet that if you took that period Blob mentioned and subtracted all of the high end picks (say, top three of each draft) the Red Wings aggregated picks would compare favorably to just about anyone in the league. If you take into account their highest (non-excluded, in this comparison, since they took Primeau at 3) pick was at 10 and they had just a couple under 20 they'd compare very well indeed.

Here are the guys picked in that range with over 100 games played who were not taken with a gimme pick.

That's a pretty damned good haul over 15 years, guys like Sillinger and Knuble and Boughner may not be impressive to you but they were career NHLers who contributed to the Wings success on the ice and via trade.

One of those guys taken inside the top ten (Sillinger at 10), one more taken inside the top 20 (Martin Lapointe at 11). I don't think there's any doubt that the Wings were a strong drafting team, especially given their lack of high end selections.

Maybe they don't deserve all the praise they've gotten over the years but that doesn't mean they don't deserve praise at all.

By way of comparison, you know how long the list of players is that the Canucks drafted over the same period using the same criteria? 18 players, less than half as many.

Who gives a rats ass what round the players were taken in ? The fact of the matter is my point stands. Detroit was far and away the best drafting team from the late 80's ( you can probably take it back to the early 80's if you want to) until 5 years ago. They have drafted way more quality NHL players than any team during that time period. Even if the Wings haven't drafted as well the past 5 or 6 years they still have more NHL propects than Vancouver. BTW Brendan Smith will be a top 4 D-man as early as this year. He's a very nice young player.

I think Fred just loves to argue sometimes.

BTW I have never said Vancouver is a lousy drafting team. They are around middle of the pack......Detroit however has been elite.

Blob Mckenzie wrote:Who gives a rats ass what round the players were taken in ? The fact of the matter is my point stands. Detroit was far and away the best drafting team from the late 80's ( you can probably take it back to the early 80's if you want to) until 5 years ago. They have drafted way more quality NHL players than any team during that time period.

I think Fred just loves to argue sometimes.

No Blob that's not the concept at all. The reason that by FAR the most players in the draft come form the first round is valid...I hope you're not suggesting other wise. You keep screwing up first round picks and guess what it doesn't look good on your resume and after all that's what we're debating here, this magical Detroit scouting machine.

I don't have the time to do it right now, but you can download the draft histories for each team from hockeyDB into a spreadsheet and use the draft position, draft round and number of NHL games played to come up with a ranking. Combine draft position and draft round to get a multiplier. Say draft position 1-10 = 1, 11-20 = 2. 21-30 = 3 ...... This would weight lower picks, ie higher risk picks, higher than top of the heap lower risk picks. Remember you are trying to rank drafting and scouting, not the players themselves.

So you'd have for each team's draft year a list of Player Name, # of NHL Games Played, Draft Position Multiplier and a Ranking (# of NHL Games Played X Draft Position Multiplier).

Total the ranking for each teams draft years to get a Gross Ranking for the Team.

In order to compensate for teams that have traded away picks vs teams that have accumulated picks, divide the Gross Ranking for the Team by the total # of picks in the draft (probably need to weight this factor as well as two 1st round picks are likely worth more than three 4th round picks).

Off the top of my head, I'd say this would give a good number for ranking teams scouting/drafting histories. It may not allow direct team to team comparisons but I suspect there would be natural data breaks that would group teams into good, mediocre and poor.

For team to team direct comparison, the multiplier would have to be refined by an analysis of # of players per ranking group that make the NHL and the average number of games played by players in each ranking group.

I glanced through the data recently and it is easy to agree with Fred that some of Detroit's late round gems skew peoples impression of their drafting as they have some early round busts. Also from my quick perusal, Vancouver is not stellar, but also not that bad, more middling to upper mid pack, but that is just from a glance at the data.

A large factor skewing Vancouver's recent draft history is the dead guy in the '05 draft. Vancouver had an excellent draft in 2004 with Schneider #26, Edler #91, Mike Brown #151, Hansen #287.

EDIT: there are some things that will skew these numbers, some teams draft for position and will for example take a higher risk defender over a lower risk forward because they feel they have depth at forward and need defenders. Goaltenders, who typically take longer to go from minors to starters will also skew the data (see Vancouver's Schneider).

Last edited by Topper on Wed Jan 02, 2013 2:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

dbr provided a comprehensive list of players who were picked by the Wings in the first few rounds. They were still better at drafting than most if not all teams in the early rounds. When you add in all the gems from the later rounds they blow everybody away. Not sure why you have such a difficult time trying to wrap your head round this. I guess you hadn't noticed all the HOFers and the cups.

Blob Mckenzie wrote:dbr provided a comprehensive list of players who were picked by the Wings in the first few rounds. They were still better at drafting than most if not all teams in the early rounds. When you add in all the gems from the later rounds they blow everybody away. Not sure why you have such a difficult time trying to wrap your head round this. I guess you hadn't noticed all the HOFers and the cups.

Bobby that was when Jesus was a boy. TO has a great Stanley Cup record as well ....so they're good ??

A good number of the players dbr gave were 4th liners, Dallas Drake, Dan McGillis, Jamie Pushor, Andre Erickson and lets not forget the riveting career Stewart Malgunas had. They were player that were included while the likes of Larinov, Kontsantinov, Federov and Yzerman pulled the sled. Sure Detroit exploited the break up of the Soviet Union I don't dispute that but take those "older" Russians ie players that were not scouted as juniors ie ready made players!!, and you don't have a lot. How can you honestly include a thirty year old and say he's a draft choice

Any way you're not going to see it through my eyes and I miss your point. Mexican stand off

Filppula, really!! John Jakopin who the Hell is that and then to add insult to injury Yuri Butsayev gimme a break

Bobby that was when Jesus was a boy. TO has a great Stanley Cup record as well ....so they're good ??

A good number of the players dbr gave were 4th liners, Dallas Drake, Dan McGillis, Jamie Pushor, Andre Erickson and lets not forget the riveting career Stewart Malgunas had. They were player that were included while the likes of Larinov, Kontsantinov, Federov and Yzerman pulled the sled. Sure Detroit exploited the break up of the Soviet Union I don't dispute that but take those "older" Russians ie players that were not scouted as juniors ie ready made players!!, and you don't have a lot. How can you honestly include a thirty year old and say he's a draft choice

Any way you're not going to see it through my eyes and I miss your point. Mexican stand off

Filppula, really!! John Jakopin who the Hell is that and then to add insult to injury Yuri Butsayev gimme a break

The fact you bring up TO and their cups in the 6 team league to this thread is fairly telling. I knew I smelled shit somewhere......looks like Fred is talking out of his ass again. Just like Alexander Mogilny's play nosedived when he left here right ??? See I can do that too.

Calling a guy like Dallas Drake a 4th liner is a little disingenuous to say the least. I hated the little prick but he scored at a 40 point pace pretty much his whole career and played over 1000 NHL games.I don't remember too many 4th liners putting up 40 points a year in the dead puck era. Calling Dan McGillis a 4th liner is a joke also. He was a legit hard nosed d-man who was top 4 on any team in his day.

The Wings drafted Yzerman, Fedorov and Konstantinov as young players and Larionov was added to the mix .........no idea what you are yammering about with old Russians there. Fetisov was an older pick and a good one too....perhaps that's what you're referring to.

You called out the Wings drafting and I took issue with that. I am the first one to admit they haven't drafted as well as the did in the past , but only an idiot would say that they haven't done fairly well even if they don't grab a Zetterburg every single fucking season.You called their success at the draft table a myth which to me is ridiculous. Even if I listed the Wings players that are still playing in the league and who contributed greatly to the teams success I could assemble a good team of drafted Wings players. According to you they haven't drafted anyone decent since Jesus was a boy.

I glanced through the data recently and it is easy to agree with Fred that some of Detroit's late round gems skew peoples impression of their drafting as they have some early round busts. Also from my quick perusal, Vancouver is not stellar, but also not that bad, more middling to upper mid pack, but that is just from a glance at the data.

Sure Detroit has crapped the bed on some high selections but so has everyone else. They seperate themselves from the pack by finding good players in the late rounds.

Take a look at this article, Obviously some one that has a lot more time or willingess to review draft records of DetroitThey use Detroits BAD drafting record as an example

Myth Busting: Must you draft well to win?

January 21, 2008David JohnsonNHL31 comments

The Puck Stops Here recently had a story regarding the Leafs woes and pointed the finger at their drafting record. “

Putting aside the ridiculous situation in management of the Toronto Maple Leafs, there is a simple hockey-related reason the team is doing poorly. That reason is the draft. Toronto has not drafted well. ” Now, I am not writing this article to defend the Leafs drafting record but rather to bust the myth that you have to keep your top picks and you have to draft well to be successful. Take a look at this list of players:

Anders Eriksson Jon Coleman Kevin Hilton Yan Golubovsky Mathieu Dandeneault Sean Gillam Maxim Kuznetsov Phillippe Audet Darryl Laplante Jesse Wallin Aren Miller Johan Forsander Yuri Butsayev Petr Sykora (not the good one) Quintin Laing Jiri Fischer Ryan Barnes Tomek Valtonen Jari Tolsa Andrei Maximenko Kent McDonnell Niklas Kronwall Tomas Kopecky Stegan Liv Igor Grigorenko Drew MacIntyre Miroslav BlatakFor those of you who may not have clued in, that is the very unspectacular list of the top 3 picks in each draft year from 1993 to 2001 of the Detroit Red Wings, also known as the most successful team of the past dozen or so years. That is a pretty unspectacular list don’t you think and none of those players would be considered key members of any of their Stanley Cup wins and only Kronwall is of any significant impoartance to the current NHL squad.

For those unsure, that is the top 3 draft picks of the New Jesey Devils in each year from 1996 to 2002. Aside from Gomez none of those players played a significant role in any of the Devils 3 Cup wins and none of those palyers are currently playing a significant role with the current New Jersey team that is fighting for second spot in the eastern conference this season. Most people consider New Jersey to be one of the better drafting teams in the NHL. Strange concept when you see the list above. I want to make it clear that I am not defending the Leafs drafting record which is mixed (though certainly on par with or better than the above lists of players) but rather I want to attempt to put to rest the myth that you can’t win if you trade away your top draft picks or don’t draft well with them. Clearly based on the success of the Red Wings and Devils you can have some, or even lots, of success. It certainly helps to draft well, but it is not a prerequisite and isn’t the only, or even the main, problem with the Leafs.

(For the record, both New Jersey and Detroit drafted some very good players with late round picks but is that really what we should call good drafting or should we call it luck with a bit of good development thrown in. Plus, I have never heard people bitterly complain when the Leafs, or anyone, trade away a 6th or 7th round draft pick.)

Blob Mckenzie wrote:Detroit was the BEST drafting team from about 89 - 2006 bar none and it isn't even close.

Fred wrote:I'm not trying to make light of the players that Detroit picked up. Clearly great players. But the scouting has praise heaped upon it when IMO it shouldn't. Their selection of players chosen with high picks clearly shows their inability to make good choices. .

Blob Mckenzie wrote:Who gives a rats ass what round the players were taken in ? The fact of the matter is my point stands. Detroit was far and away the best drafting team from the late 80's until 5 years ago. They have drafted way more quality NHL players than any team during that time period.

Fred wrote:No Blob that's not the concept at all. The reason that by FAR the most players in the draft come form the first round is valid...I hope you're not suggesting other wise. You keep screwing up first round picks and guess what it doesn't look good on your resume and after all that's what we're debating here, this magical Detroit scouting machine.

Blob Mckenzie wrote:dbr provided a comprehensive list of players who were picked by the Wings in the first few rounds. They were still better at drafting than most if not all teams in the early rounds. When you add in all the gems from the later rounds they blow everybody away. Not sure why you have such a difficult time trying to wrap your head round this. I guess you hadn't noticed all the HOFers and the cups.

Fred wrote:Bobby that was when Jesus was a boy. TO has a great Stanley Cup record as well ....so they're good ??

Any way you're not going to see it through my eyes and I miss your point. Mexican stand off

Blob Mckenzie wrote:The fact you bring up TO and their cups in the 6 team league to this thread is fairly telling. I knew I smelled shit somewhere......looks like Fred is talking out of his ass again.

Yup.

Fred "what we're debating here" is the drafting record of the Wings from 1989 to 2006.

Blobby has been very clear on that and you have clearly disagreed.

I say the Wings have been at least average over that time frame in the 1st round

(considering their usual position in the bottom-half of the 1st round).

I say the Wings have been fantastic over that time frame in the 2nd round PERIOD.

And of course we all agree they have been 2nd-to-none over that time frame in the lower rounds.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Let's....

http://proicehockey.about.com/od/prospects/f/draft_success.htm

Question: How Many NHL Draft Picks Make it to the NHL?

Over 200 players are selected at every NHL draft. How many of them go on to have NHL careers? What are the prospects for a player selected in the first round of the NHL Draft compared to later rounds?

Answer: To properly evaluate a draft, you need a few year's distance from it. So let's look at the 1990s.To define whether a player "makes it," let's set the threshold at 200 NHL games. We'll call them "career players."

Between 1990 and 1999, there were 2,600 names called at the NHL Entry Draft.

As of 2007, 494 of those players have appeared in at least 200 NHL games. That's a success rate of 19 percent.

But of course, not all draft picks are created equal. The guys picked in the first round are a cut above the rest:

Success rate of first-round draft picks.

Based on the 1990s sample, a first-round draft pick has a 63 percent chance of being a career player.

Beyond the first round.

This is where the NHL dream begins to fade in a hurry:

From 1990 to 1999, about one-quarter of the players selected in the second round turned into NHL career players.

Those drafted in the third round and beyond are really up against it.

From over 2,000 players selected in the third round and beyond during 1990s, just 261 made it as NHL career players.

That's about 12 percent.

I'm going to go by the criteria above because I believe it is sound criteria indeed.